


I Choose You

by aliengirlguy



Series: Waundering Wizard [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Crossover, Family Drama, Gen, Humor, Pokemon - Freeform, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-08 01:01:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13447182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliengirlguy/pseuds/aliengirlguy
Summary: Lily, in an effort to save her son from the grasp Fate itself, makes a sacrifice to see her son safe into a new world far different from what she had known.This is a Part one, a Prequel fic. it is not long.





	1. The Maw

**Author's Note:**

> I got sucked into playing the Pokemon games recently and I had read some great Pokemon/Harry Potter fanfic so I thought I would throw my hat into the ring so to speak.

Lily Potter nee Evans gritted her teeth, flaming hair spinning around her panicked features as the house quaked with spell battle. She could taste the dark magic in the air, making her lips pull back in a snarl of distaste and fear in equal quantities.

There was a sudden finality in the air as well, a hushed blink of a moment that she recognized from other such previous moments from various battlefields, small and large, since she had become part of this detestable war with a squeeze of agony, it was a moment of death.

She could feel it with surety in her bones that the one to escape their mortal coil it wasn’t the intruder into their home, the feared dark bogeyman made flesh and reality. No, she was relatively sure her brave, foolish wonderful James was the crumpled body lying at his enemy’s feet.

She wanted nothing more then to fling every fiber of her rage and despair behind her magic in a curse that would level all curses in her revenge, but she was not so foolish as to give into her emotions and forget what was important.

She whirled around, casual robes swirling around her as she ran for the nursery.

_'Why oh why did it have to be all the way on the top floor?!'_

Her keen mind tumbled with plans. She knew there was a strong likelihood that the fire place floo was compromised, and apperating was not a possibility, she had felt the intruder's wards snap up as soon as the man burst through their front door, wand blazing and curses on his serpentine lips.

Lily sucked in a breath when she felt the Dark Lord Voldemort, so powerful and steeped in his dark intent that it actually proceeded him up the stairs, moving towards where Lily and her son, who was whimpering in her arms now, pulled from his sound slumber in his crib by all the excitement.

Or, her eyes strayed to the small window, seemingly cornered.

Using a spell she punched the entire window out and scrambled onto the ledge and with a quick Wingardum Leviosa she floated her and her son to the ground safely.

She didn’t dare look back at what had once been her home, not seeing hte enraged explosion of magic that Voldermort left in his fury at finding her gone, setting the house ablaze in an explosion, she just ran.

Ooo ooo ooo

_1 month later..._

The Longbottoms, including little Neville were dead, killed by Voldemort himself.

Lily let out a heavy breath when she read the headlines in the wizard newspaper that she had taken from the trash.

She wiped her eyes with an overlarge faded sleeve, the only moment she allowed herself to mourn for the latest casualties, then her grim green eyes returned to furtively checking the quiet streets of the small wizarding town of Frankincense, hidden like a decayed jewel in the rough, held deep in the heart of Germany.

So much apperating, so many portkeys, a confundus and obliviate on muggle transport agencies.

Always she was running.

She sometimes questioned her decision to have run so far and so long, not even contacting anyone in the Order, not even Sirius. It was so terrifying, so lonely...but the last time she had placed her family in the hands of Dumbledore, she had lost her husband. Lily’s chest ached at the thought.

The hood on the filthy patched cloak was drawn closer, hiding dark chestnut hair.

She gripped the sack of food she had carefully scavenged here and there. It had taken her longer then she had thought this trip and she was uncomfortable being out in the open for so long.

She grits her teeth thinking of her babe, how he had long ago stopped crying out of hunger.

She slid through a gap in a fence, leaving the mundane shops behind and into the more seedier part of the wizard town.

This section of the town had been decimated by an attack by Grindlewald back in the 40’s. Even decades later, locals still felt weary in venturing inside this end of the town. Stories of malevolent poltergeists, leithifold, even a dementor! All rumored to haunt what had been dubbed by the locals as The Blight.

They were right about all of it though, which was perfect for Lily.

Lily carefully skated the edge of a burnt out hole were the familiar flowing capes of two such creatures were whipping and wrapping around each other in a battle over a dead raccoon, Lily noted this and stirred clear.

She hid in a storm train when a group of poltergeists threw rocks at windows, heading in the direction of the closest inhabited buildings on the edge of the Blight, obviously bored.

She averted her eyes when the pale ghost of a weeping man called for the souls of his family.

At one point she gripped her wand and crouched behind the large glowing white crow of her patronous in a skeletal park as a dementor turned its hood in her direction before passing on to find better prey, likely the primitive souls of the other lesser dark creatures that infested the place.

With one last look around her, one check at the various sneakascopes hanging from her waist, reassured by their inert quiet, and pushed aside a large flat piece of wall, to reveal a square hole in the ground.

She pushed aside the blanket and smiled in relief as she always did when the wards she had constructed went up and the warm glow of her new home meant her eyes. She set the scavenged food on a rickety table and lit a magical fire under the large, slightly pitted but still usable, cauldron.

She removed the stasis spell on the bubbling potion, and taking a breath, pulled out a small vile that looked like liquid gold. This had been particularly hard to obtain. The shadier potion master in the neighborhood outside the Blight had demanded a high price for the difficult to make potion, perhaps because it was illegal in this country, but she had been willing to pay it with a vial of tears of pure innocence and the torn cloth of a Dementor's shroud. Her Harry was a naturally quiet babe by now, it had take awhile to catch enough of his tears to fill one tube for the former.

She had sweetened the pot by adding the remains of a dead lethifold she had killed her self. The shady man was very pleased indeed and had willingly turned over the potion.

Lily took a breath and carefully added half of the potion to the bubbling dark red concoction, stirring only once counter clockwise.

The cauldron shivered once, belched and turned royal purple.

She quickly returned it to stasis and finally let her self breath. The luck potion was pure enough in its ingredients after all. Had it been faulty, she would have lost a few weeks worth of work.

A soft coo from the play pen that sat under a glowing golden bubble caught her attention.

She took a few moments to unravel the wards around her son and smiled down at her babe.

“Hello luv,” she cooed reaching in and scooping up the baby, dressed in a faded pink jumper and ripped shorts she had pilfered from some ruins, which clashed horribly with his flaming red tangled mop. She ruefully had to admit that utilizing a simple colour switch spell on their features, an added layer of protection that wouldn’t need upkeep, had perhaps made looking at her son easier, to not see the features of her dead husband quite so clearly as he got older.

She cast the usual spells to clean and refresh his cloth diaper, gave him a brief wash in the small fountain basin she had scrounged from somewhere, filing it with an aquamenti and a warming charm.

She bathed them both, conjuring some soap, and scrubbing them both, laughing when her son giggled at the large colorful bubbles.

When they were done and wrapped up in fresh cloths and blankets and cuddled down on a broken down easy chair, Lily pulled out a slightly ratty gardening magazine that she had pilfered from the garbage, showing still colorful glossy images of rolling fields of flowers, soaring mountains, calm rivers with happy fat frogs croaking on rocks.

She would make up stories using the magazine. Stories about them both going to places that were filled with flowers and life. Stories that, if her plan worked, would hopefully come to fruition.

“Mama?” her little boy patted her cheeks, drawing her attention back to her son.

“Yes sweetie?”

“Mama, song! Song!” Harry demanded, waving his tiny fists.

“That should have a “please” with it young man,” she chided gently.

The toddler pursed his lips in a pout, but when his mother remained unmoved, if amused, the little boy reluctantly offered “Pwese mama?”

Lily nodded approvingly, “good boy, now let’s see...”

 _“Just a day,_  
_Just an ordinary day._  
_Just trying to get by._  
_Just a boy,_  
_Just an ordinary boy._  
_But he was looking to the sky._  
_And as he asked if I would come along_  
_I started to realize_  
_That everyday he finds_  
_Just what he's looking for,_  
_Like a shooting star he shines...” (1)._

ooo ooo ooo

_2 weeks later..._

Lily froze when she saw stars.

No, she hadn’t hit her head or taken up star gazing. These stars were silver and gleamed on the slightly bent navy-blue wizard hat that sat on the head of a recognizable wizard.

Lily felt the breath leave her when she saw Albus Dumbledore stepping out of the very potion maker’s store that she had obtained a few of her vital ingredients. The man must have finally figured out who she was, and had turned her in. Both the Light and the Dark side had a steep reward offered to anyone with information on her whereabouts after all, she supposed that she should have expected this sooner rather then later.

She carefully shrank deeper into the shadows, not daring to breath as the Headmaster walked past her hiding place.

She had been delayed a day in her plans due to Harry taking on a slight fever in the night. She had only dared leave him now under the watchful gaze of a friendly ghost she had meant recently. Ethel would make sure that Harry would be safe, while She’d gone to obtain the most vital ingredient.

She gripped the dirty bag that dripped blood on her feet in anger, green eyes flashing.

It was because of him and his demands for lethifold parts and doxy venom that she had become rather good at hunting the dark creatures of the Blight, which had significantly shrunk the local population. She had known it was tricky, but the vile little man had seemed willing to keep their deal of him providing her the ingredients she needed and his mouth quiet if she assured his fortune with the rare dark creature parts she hunted for him.

She quietly swore, it seems that whatever the Order and/or the Dark Lord had put on offer for her an Harry's head must have substantially increased indeed for the despicable little man to renege. 

She needed that final ingredient! It was to vital, to rare, to find anywhere else and she was in the final stage! She could not risk moving everything and having to start over again! It had been a miracle she had even come this far!

She waited until she saw Dumbledore’s colorful robes disappear around a corner, and with a grim set to her features, she stalked the shadows towards the seedy Apothecary.

Lily was, despite some of the actions she might have taken to insure the safety of her son, a Light Witch, or she had liked to think her self as morally Light, at one time anyway. But now, reality was a harsh mistress, and she'd had to do many questionable things in her months on the run, but she had at least comforted herself with the idea that she for the most part not done anything that truly compromised her sense of her being a good person. But she needed that ingredient, and she was to close now to let a little thing like her moral pride get in her way. So, with a shutter she buried the part of her that screamed that what she was about to do was wrong and used all the skills she had acquired sneaking up on lethifold and slipped inside with one purpose.

She found Gregory Dane counting the money from his till and writing down the results in his records with a satisfied look on his face.

Even sorry men can be decent bookkeepers, Lily supposed.

Gregory’s head snapped up when his sneakscope began to twirl and light up. A man in his business always carried one on hand, though Lily’s was not the loud bright thing his was.

Of course, it didn’t help slow reflexes, and Lily’s were much better then her victim’s. The man had a dagger at his throat before he could successfully pull out his wand.

“One wrong move and your blood will ruin your meticulous ledgers,” Lily growled, her voice harsh in her anger and desperation.

The man yelped, but stilled, especially when she added in afterthought, “oh, and did I mention this is my favorite lethifold skinner?”

The man began to sweat and whimpered, as well he should, someone in his business knowing the properties of lethifold blood better then she did, all of them lethal in its pure state.

“You betrayed me,” she breathed into his ear, “But I will admit that Albus is persuasive and you are a weak cad. I am only mildly surprised it isn’t the dark lord himself and not the leader of the light, but you were more likely to be paid by Albus then the former,” she mused to herself, then she narrowed her eyes, green eyes which were reflected in the man’s foe glass hanging above his cash.

Gregory swallowed swallowed and began to shake.

“Where is it?”

“Please! Spare me!”

Lily drew the tip of the blade along a fat jowl, not yet breaking skin but the threat was clear.

The potion master whimpered, but quickly pointed towards a small non-descript shoe-box under his desk.

She had him grab it and open it in her presence.

There resisting on a bed of cotton, was the dully gleaming slate grey upper and lower jaw bones of a dementor.

Once every thousand years, it was said, a few especially old dementors that were the weakest in power, as far as the creatures are concerned, would stop feeding or hunting, and eventually just...die.

No one had ever witnessed an actual dementor’s death without becoming insane, if you survived the encounter that is.

Sometimes those few insane bastards could be found with pieces of the creature on their person. Her luck was with her in that they were the specific parts she had needed. The rarest of the lot. Keeping the knife steady, she cast a spell to confirm the authenticity, and smiled grimly in satisfaction.

“Yes, this will do.”

Lily felt the man relax.

Then he stiffened again when the blade flashed across his neck.

A spray of blood washed the walls and Lily. She stared down at the dead man she had killed in cold blood for only a heavy second before grabbing the box and running.

When she returned she found Ethel, her ghost friend waiting for her just outside her hidey-hole.

The ghost would have been a good Santa Clause, had been the first thought when she had stumbled across him while scavenging in the remains of his old store a few months ago while she had reminded him of his deceased wife and had taken a shine to haunting her. She wasn’t adverse, as he was a valuable resource on the Blight and a great babysitter.

“Gracious Lily! What happened to you? Your covered in blood!”

Lily closed her eyes and pushed away the image of bulging dead eyes and a gaping red smile in his neck.

“I can’t talk about it now Virgil, my time is shorter then I had thought. I have been found.”

The ghost stroked his silvery beard worriedly.

“This is not good. Were you at least able to obtain the last item you needed for the ceremony?”

Lily nodded, pulling out the shoe box from inside the folds of her robes. She set it down and quickly began disrobing, not bothered by the ghost in the room. It wasn’t the first time that he had seen Lily disrobed.

She filled her make-shift tub, scrubbing her self as clean as possible, emptying the tub then filing it again. As Lily strode back and forth in the small space, grinding herbs and sprinkling them in the fresh water and on the floor, the candlelight shone off golden skin tanned by spending so long outside, scars of battles with dark creatures and hard living, and everywhere else covered in intricate, alien ruins.

They decorated every inch of her body. Virgil didn’t understand what any of them meant, but he understood enough of her intent, and was always willing to aide a desperate young mother.

After the woman had finished cleansing her bathtub, she took the still warm cauldron by its handles, and dragged the frothing pale blue potion to the tub and with a grunt and tipped the cauldron, pouring the potion inside.

It writhed like something that wasn’t quite liquid and might just be trying to be something solid.

In his crib, Harry watched his mother with wide eyes.

Lily sighed with relief when none of it managed to spill. The fact that this part of the ritual required her to do everything by hand was the most difficult. She was just glad that she had developed some muscle over the past year.

Rubbing her sore back, she stared down at the pool of frothing potion with satisfaction.

Then she turned to her son and gently picked him up. She removed all his cloths, even the little pair of glasses she had found when she had noticed he was starting to squint. Her son squinted up at her. She ran a hand through his messy red locks and stared down at the identical runes etched on her baby’s body, leaving only the face relatively clear, but for a swirling symbol above both their right eyes.

She gave her self a moment to feel the familiar remorse. Having to carve the runes and symbols into her self using a purified dagger and aide of magic for hard to reach places had been hellish but having to knock out her son and carve them into his skin, so carefully, had been a level of hell she hoped she never would have to visit again.

She pulled out a long rope made of dark hair, braided thickly. She’d had to take a hair lengthening potion for a few days to grow enough. She rubbed her short-shorn hair, wondering what James would think of her new look if he were to see it now. Likely horrified, the man always had loved her hair.

The rope was necessary. With what she was about to do, they could not move forward with anything from their world except their own bodies. She was uncertain at he strength of the forces she would face and didn’t want to risk her baby getting separated from her, so she used the hair rope to secure Harry tightly to her body in a make shift harness.

When she was done, she picked up the final ingredient and approached the seething pool. She took a deep breath in then let it out and threw the two jaw bones into the potion.

Her son began to whimper when the candle light snuffed out, then the temperature began to drop and Harry cried in discomfort.

Lily stepped towards the only light in the room, coming now from the sudden still potion. A ghostly death-like fog hovered like an after image caught in a negative.

Then a thing emerged from the potion, it writhed sinuously, but unmistakably had the ghostly appearance of a dementor.

She stood before the thing, took out a needle forged from her own bone (that had been a painful hour of skelgrow) and pricked both her and Harry’s hands, and tossing the bloodied thing right into the open bone jaws of the ritual.

The creature sucked it inside and dissolved, revealing the glowing bones, which began to enlarge, then opened wide, forming into a primitive arch way.

Suddenly the wall protecting the entrance to Lily’s home was banished in that moment, and she was left staring wide eyed at tall serpentine figure with burning red eyes as he swept into the room.

“So,” Lily said softly, “it appears Albus wasn’t the only one who was tipped off after all,” Lily said blandly.

She observed Voldemort taking in the glowing arch, the magic steeped atmosphere, the glowing runs that covered her and her son.

“This is quite an impressive bit of dark magic,” Voldemort complemented casually as he prowled the perimeter of the room, his wand waving as he tried to undo the various wards she had placed, shielding the ritual site from outside interference.

“Its not dark magic,” Lily corrected calmly, “though many of the ingredients could be said to be such. This is...primal, neutral, indifferent to the whims and demands of emotion or morality.”

“So my information that you were an Unspeakable before hiding away was true after all.”

Lily had no doubt about his contacts within the Unspeakables.

“Tell me Mudblood,” his tone was almost conversational, “what is the purpose of your little ritual, as intriguingly delicious as it feels? Even should you some how escape me again, there is no place safe on the planet that can hide you and your son from my wand, though I must applaud you on having kept up the chase for so long.”

Lily felt an amused smile curl her lips and Voldemort was mildly surprised, his intrigue over what he was witnessing growing, even as he worked quickly and silently to dismantle the wards.

“I know,” she agreed readily enough, running her fingers through her son’s hair absently.

He paused in his dismantling, “you seem very calm and accepting of that fact.” Voldemort’s eyes narrowed.

Lily nodded solemnly, “I have, and it was the only thing on my mind those early days after you killed my husband,” her voice was a little brittle, but otherwise steady, “I knew I would forever be running from both you and Albus. I knew that I would always be running from the greatest powers in this world, the whip crack of prophesy and fate driving all of us forward. I could run and run, and I would never escape it, just as I wouldn’t escape you or Dumbledore in the end. My only options were to have my son inherit a war under Dumbledore, or defeat prophesy.”

Voldemort grinned maliciously, as he let the woman talk, he was almost through the wards...

Then in an almost change of conversation, Lily asked the Dark Lord, “would you like to know the prophesy? The full one, not the small bit that your minion gave you?”

Voldemort froze. His enemy, a warrior of the Light side, though that might be arguable given what he had stumbled across just now, but still…Even if he killed the both of them this evening, the lack of knowledge on the full prophesy had eaten at him. After all, how exactly was this lesser being supposed to destroy him anyway? There was a weakness somewhere, and he anted to know what it was badly. Controlling his reaction, made an exaggerated go-ahead gesture, why not humour the girl? She was going to die anyway and soon her brat, she was obviously addled, despite the complexity of the ritual that was visible, why not listen to information freely offered?

Lily gave a little cold smile of her own and intoned the words of her one true enemy from the day that Albus had uttered them to two expectant mothers in his Headmaster’s office, when Fate itself had declared war on her family and that of another.

“"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies...." (2).

Voldemort gave a high laugh of victory as the wards fell, soon after the words of the full prophecy, and screamed “Avada Kadavra!”

The green light of the killing curse cut through the unnatural darkness of the room, directly towards Lily, who stepped backward into the arch moments before the deadly spell hit.

Lily for a moment saw the spill of the dark green magic as it raked over the impassable barrier that existed for all but her and Harry. It was oddly beautiful in a way, and she had the idle morbid wondering if James and all those who had fallen under the Unforgivable saw the same beauty before their life was snuffed instantly.

She felt a combination of amusement and vicious satisfaction when she saw the Dark Lord’s wide-eyed gobsmacked expression before the yawning maw of the gate closed and swallowed her whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Lyrics from "Ordinary Day" by Vanessa Carlton.  
> 2\. Cut and paste of the Prophecy from the HP books.


	2. Mirrored

Lily’s first impression of her new location was of a great sprawling infinite space of mirrored spires that had neither top nor bottom. The play of light and shadow was the most disturbing part. Where her mind tried to apply the rationality of how shadows and light were supposed to fall, they seemed to be in reverse. There were definitions, but no sense of any sort of ending dimensions. For a moment, her mind shook with the improbability of it, but she gritted her teeth, the scars on her’s and Harry’s bodies almost burning cold.

Her son whimpered in her hold.

Both were reminders that she didn’t have the luxury of becoming a gibbering loon faced with the impossibilities of the rigid ingrained structures of reality from her world being ruptured.

“Hush luv,” she crooned, holding his face against her chest.

The first thing she tried to do was move in a direction what she supposed was forward.

She let out an annoyed huff when she found her self moving in what she felt was backwards instead.

She frowned, trying again.

She again nearly felt herself dip into panic when each successive attempt yielded her body listing into every angle imaginable accept her intended movement.

She took a shaky but calming breath. “Easy Lily,” she muttered to herself, “remember what the scriptures said. This is a place of reversal. Logic is chaos, chaos is logic, up is down and vice versa. So...if moving forward is backwards and left is right and diagonal is straight….”

So Lily made the conscious effort to think over each movement carefully.

It was like learning to walk again, but she had managed a few minutes of victorious progress until suddenly, she was flung forward, careening in every direction, occasionally pinging off mirror-like surfaces, but instead of her own panicked expression, she saw quick flashes of places, people, creatures, or nothing at all.

Harry meanwhile couldn’t take anymore of this kaleidoscope of confusion and movement before he let loose a great loud sudden wail.

The cry was startlingly loud, vibrating outwards in the form of a great wave of agitated reddish light. It vibrated over the various formless things and continued onward like a ripple in a pound.

Lily blinked in surprise, then looked around herself wearily when she stopped bouncing.

The scriptures had said that there were things in this reverse place. If they hadn’t noticed her yet they would have now.

Her son continued to wail, Lily finally managing to still, standing on one of the mirror like surfaces and frantically tried to sooth her distraught babe.

Then a golden ring of light suddenly rippled towards Lily, and while there was no sound as she would have normally defined it, there was a sense of words.

Lily froze at words that could only be called...other. There was no sense of identity in the tone, only a strong feeling of something beyond her comprehension turning a small fraction of its great might upon her.

When the gold light dissipated, she found herself in the center of languid shifting coil of matte grey with striking stripes of black with a blood red center. There were six black ghostly streamers on its back with red spikes at the tips that arched above and below her. Its legs were pointed spikes, with four additional golden spikes appearing near the edge of its tail, which the creature was resting its head which was composed of a gold crown-like armor and two horns facing backwards. It had bright blazing red eyes that pinned her like a bug.

Another blaze of gold light, .

Lily coughed, cleared her throat, and tried to keep her voice from reflecting her trembling body, which appeared disturbingly as a weak sort of grayish-purple.

“Hel...Hello Giratina, Lord of Dimensions and the Reverse between.”

The giant creature she had called Giratina huffed in amusement, .

“I beg your pardon great lord, but I am not lost. I came here seeking your aide,” slightly deeper mauve.

The being eyed her in consideration, taking in everything about her that she was suddenly sure that even she was unaware of.

“When I was young and starting out in a place that studies mysteries, I was sorting a library of rare texts and became fascinated with the scriptures of a man who claimed to have come from another world. He claimed to have gotten accidentally lost in a place of reversals, and while in the place, he meant a great being that called itself Giratina, ruler of the Reverse World, between dimensions of countless possibilities that are always realized and birth more but are separate. His claim was that you helped him by providing him a choice. He would gaze into mirrors and from one of those would choose a place to live or he would be guided back to his own world.” The explanation was a bright grape edged in silver.

Lily took a breath, still rocking Harry who had quieted at the appearance of Giratina, staring upwards with bright eyes filled with wonderment.

“He had very little magic if any, in his world and was gifted with a deep intuition, which in part aided him in creating a door way through the power of science. But he was fascinated by things he couldn’t understand, and he already understood everything his world had to offer, so among the countless possibilities in this place when he found a mirror that showed an image of a wizard using magic. He became intrigued at the probabilities and chose that one, my world, and he became a part of that world.”

Lily settled Harry more securely in the hair sling, “He wrote down his experiences, and studied magical scripture of his experiences, one of which was creating a method by which one can open a door through magic instead of science. Unfortunately for the man, while brilliant, had become insane, his fading sanity he claimed, from spending to much time in the reverse world before he was found.”

Lily gave a sweeping gesture to her body and the pulsing runes, “He devised what he called the “hazmat suit of magic” to protect, in part, those who traveled in the reverse world without also succumbing completely to its effects. I became intrigued by the texts but at the time didn’t consider them with the importance that I soon would later.”

Murky grayish-purple tinged in black.

“When I was pregnant with my son,” she gestured to Harry, “A great evil rose in our world, and my husband and I were soldiers against that evil. A prophesy followed, proclaiming that either my child or another woman’s child, both fitting the criteria of the prophesy,” a deep breath, “We were in hiding, then betrayed. Our enemy found us, killed my husband, and have been running from Fate ever since. It was while running I remembered the words of the scripture of the crazed dimension traveler. I had no other choice, forces in the world were closing in, I was desperate for any possibility no matter how remote.”

Lily trembled further, her voice becoming impassioned, “it was a difficult process, I did things I am not proud of to accomplish my goal, but I did it,” solid dark violet.

There was silence for a moment, then another wave of light.

Lily closed her eyes, slumping in despair. She had known that it was a long shot, that even if she succeeded, Giratina would not necessarily agree.>

“My son...he is innocent in all this, if you will not help me, then please spare him.”

Lily felt a thrill of horror at that. She had not considered this.

<You’ve torn apart the barriers of a rigid set of possibilities, becoming a thing opposite of Fate, chaos and infinite possibility,> the being leaned its massive head towards Lily,

Lily firmed her spine, “Its better then that he has infinite chose and possibility, as horrible as it could possibility lead, then to have him being hunted or used.”

The creature eyed her for a time, before sighing, leaning back in a resigned, yet thoughtful air, Giratina declared matter of fact, “That traveler you spoke of paid a price in his sanity. You would not like the price you would have to pay.>

‘That’s it then,’ Lily sighed, “so you won’t help him either. What do I do now?” motley lavender.

The dragonesque creature blinked almost bemusedly at her,

Giratina shifted and the tip one black streamer reached out into the nether and pulled a...hole was the best way to describe it, towards them.

The hair rope snapped and suddenly Harry was ripped from her arms and rose in the air away from her. She was frozen unable to move, but she was able to scream.

“Wait! Please!” she shouted.

Giratina paused, her son dangling from nothingness over a gapping hole.

Harry was not to pleased to be separated from his mother, and gave another wail that vibrated brilliant red, smacking with surprising solidity against Giratina who gave a grunt, as its scales shuttered and vibrated with the distress, causing the being to let go involuntarily in its surprise.

Harry floated/flew/moved back towards his mother, and Lily quickly quieted her son, rubbing his back and humming soothing tunes into his soft hair until the red light dissipated.

“Please,” Lily begged quietly, “let me accompany my son! he’s just a baby, he could be vulnerable to anything in this new world.”

Giratina shifted and settled back in its original position, the tip of its tail waving back and forth. 

The creature bent forward until its snout was filing her vision,

“How long?” Lily whispered.

‘In other words, I have a year before I return to die,’ Lily shuttered again, but nodded grimly, “I accept your offer and I will pay the price.” Here words were once again a deep violet, though this time with an edging of gold.

Giratina, while not outwardly showing it, gave her a sense that it approved of her some how.

There was no more conversation after that, it simply picked her up with an invisible grip and flung her and her son into the hole with enough force that it felt like there was a hurricane wind at her back.

She held on frantically while her son screamed in joy at the frenetic ride, then things became dark.


	3. Grass is Greener

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lily doesn't know the name of any of the pokemon obviously, so her descriptions will be vague during her perspective.

Lily woke lying in a patch of grass, the sun shining on her body. She blinked owlishly around her, then her honed instincts kicked in and she scrambled to her feet in a crouch, eyes frantically darting around the foreign landscape as her mind processed the past events.

Everything seemed fine. There was no immediate danger or sense of danger, and Harry was babbling away at the edge of a bush, his back to her.

Sighing in relief, she walked over, intending to pick Harry up and see what she could find in way of some sort of civilization, if there was any in this new world. Or at least some sort of shelter and covering for their bodies.

Her son looked up at her, gurgling happily as he hugged a huge green caterpillar like creature the size of her forearm like a teddy bear.

Lily shrieked and lifted her son in to her arms, pulling the creature off her son and dropping it at her feet, cursing the fact that she no longer had her trusty poison imbued dagger.

Her son whimpered reaching for the bug, which much to Lily’ surprise, stared up at her with big eyes and burst into tears before zipping away.

She stared at he tall grass, eyes wide. Had she just...hurt that creatures’ feelings?

Grasping Harry close, she stared around her. A sprawling grassland with a few trees, raised sandy and rocky outcroppings and the gleam of the odd clear blue pools. Among the grass the animals were all strange and likely would have even given the great Newt Schimander himself pause.

A three-headed ostrich like bird pecking in the grass, giant purple bodied butterflies with feet, a distant stampede of giant bovines with three tails...

Lily sat down.

Where just had she landed them?

 Ooo                 ooo                  ooo

 Lily quickly recovered from the shock of the alien surroundings, after all, she’s lived around worse, even if it was familiar.

The creatures, she soon learned, seemed relatively harmless for the most part. Usually running away or starring at her curiously when they spotted her, but otherwise didn’t attack if she stayed a respectful distance. That wasn’t to say that there weren’t any dangerous ones either.

The giant bee’s with lethal drill-like stingers for front legs were held with respectful weariness and let her own instinct for self-preservation kick in, despite being a Gryffindor, and sensibly hugged the cover of the nearest bush or long grass with the other vulnerable creatures when a swarm of the giant lethal insects flew by. Purple rats and beats with legs and tiny eyes...(She made a mental note to not eat beets ever again) would all share a commiserating look with each other and Lily during those sheltering moments.

During one of these many ducks and covers, she used some of the tall grass and begin to weave another crude harness for Harry, which was helped immensely by finding the bright purple shed skin of a giant snake she hoped was not the equivalent of Basilisks in this world.

When she was about a day’s travel through the immense grasslands, she had managed to successfully fashion crude coverings from shed skins and woven plants.

Her son was eager to explore the wide open green place filled with sunlight and interesting beasties after spending so long in the dark place with flickering candlelight and a boring ghost. Lily couldn’t blame him for being fussy from the overload of stimulation. She had to admit, in times when she wasn’t busy keeping them alive, she enjoyed the feel of sunlight and life all around them.

Ooo                 ooo                  ooo

The second and third day her son became cranky when they had yet again not eaten anything.

Lily was afraid that any potential fruit, berry or whatever other potential edible they came across might be potentially poisonous. She knew many spells to check for safety of course, but without her wand, which she had sacrificed as well, she only knew a few wandless spells, such as cleaning, and _wingardium leviosa._

The levitating spell though was surprisingly effective in this new world, and when she was surprised at a nearby deep river by a giant water dragon of some sort, her _wingardium leviosa_ had flung the very surprised creature into the air and some distance in the horizon. She hoped that there weren’t any dragon tamers in this new world, they would likely be ticked at that.

Ever since she was wary around the water as well, particularly when she spotted giant gold fish with horns.

She rarely slept a night as more things moved around then, including the originator of those snake skins, though they weren’t basilisks fortunately, were still quite large and likely poisonous, given the coloring and suspicious cobra-like hoods.

By the fourth day, she was desperate. They couldn’t go on with sips of water. Both she and Harry were sun-burnt, and she knew if she didn’t find any sort of shelter and food soon, they were in trouble.

It was as she was stumbling around a group of rocks looking for a place to rest, she met her first human in this new world.

The man’s head literally poked up from behind the boulders coming eye level with her chest.

The elderly man sputtered, blushing bright red. He began gesturing wildly while covering his eyes, a nosebleed gushing forth.

There was a few small spells that had been imbued into her skin, courtesy of a goblin friend, blood magic so it was acceptable through the transfer between dimensions.

As soon as she touched a hastily bit bloody thumb to the mark above her eye and that above Harry’s, a translation charm, a permanent activation regretfully, but necessary. It wasn’t like her mother tongue was useful here after all.

Soon the man’s senseless words made sense.

“...Oh, Great Mew! Naked! where’s your cloths?! Wait...are you a nudist? Has a nudist colony moved into the Safari lands?!”

Once the sudden sharp headache had past as the man’s language was now registered into her brain, she opened her mouth and felt her lips moving in a way that was foreign yet familiar.

“I’m sorry to startle you, but I am new to these lands and I was in an…accident. My cloths were damaged, and I am not certain on the local plant and animal ecology to risk eating anything. Please can you help me?”

The man stopped jabbering to himself, and his nose bleed even stopped (she was relieved, she really was worrying about hemorrhages at this point).

The man quickly jumped to her aide, the helpful sort it seemed, and offered her his lab goat, which she took gratefully, and lead her and her baby to the back of a jeep parked some ways.

She was taken to a small hospital that was attached to a place called a Pokemon Center, and a police station.

The man who had rescued her called himself Prof. Oak, he was a Pokémon researcher.

When she asked him what a Pokémon was, his eyes had bugged out comically, looking seriously alarmed on her behalf.

When she was taken into the care of rather normal looking muggle doctors, Prof. Oak was left to talk to a blue haired woman in a police uniform who introduced herself as Officer Jenny. She nearly had a heart attack though when a large pink creature in a nurse’s hat was suddenly in front of her with a thermometer.

She snatched Harry from another creature that had picked up her delighted son.

She backed out of the room, unnerved by the concerned “Chancey!” uttering things that were waving flippers at her.

She staggered out of the exam room and directly over to Prof. Oak and exclaimed, “There are giant pink creatures in nurse’s hats in there!”

Prof. Oak sighed, when Officer Jenny’s mouth dropped open, “I told you so Officer, this woman has no idea what a Pokémon is.”

The police officer meanwhile was staring at Lily like she was nuts, and that was partly the consensus made by her doctors as well.

Ooo ooo ooo

Lily spent a long time after that having Pokémon explained to her, then being questioned by Officer Jenny, which Lily replied with the admittedly lame excuse of “I don’t remember.”

She could admit that, in her zeal and focus in going through the business of getting here, she had no definite plans for once she arrived other then the immediate needs for survival. She had no idea what she would find, only that it was likely to be better then what she had left behind. So, she went with the only excuse she could, a fabricated one, and as lame as it was, it was at least effective.

There were whispers of reasons for the selective memory loss such as trauma induced by possible kidnapping, and all manner of horrible things among the team of doctors, Jenny, and Oak that had been assigned to her case.

Despite their fallout, she had learned a few things from her old friend Severus, an epitome Slytherin, and one of those things was to let people form their own opinion of you and use their assumptions and ignorance it to your advantage. So, while she didn’t agree to the theory, she didn’t say anything to disabuse them of their conclusions either.

She insisted on being with her son every step of his own medical treatment, which they were surprisingly rather accommodating about, perhaps because she presented as, barring the ignorance of how this world functioned, otherwise sane and devoted to her son.

Lily was put up in a small apartment in a care facility located outside the Safari Zone, and Lily waited, one eye on the nearest window, to see what they decided to do with her.

ooo ooo ooo

Prof. Samuel Oak took a bracing swallow from his cup of coffee as he sat in the small meeting room the Safari Zone Hospice Center. Around him was Doctor Catell, a Chancey, Nurse Joy, and Officer Jenny.

 It had been a few weeks since he had stumbled across the strange topless woman and her son lost in the Safari Zone where he had been studying a local Taros herd. He had wondered how she had been doing since her in, but what most fascinated him was her seeming inability to remember Pokemon along with other major factors that governed their world.

What must it be like to look out on the world and not know what Pokemon were? To have to relearn about it all from scratch? Too see a Pokemon and only see strange monsters? He had to admit it was a viewpoint he could not fathom, but fascinating to witness and, for all intents and purposes, outsiders’ opinion to a world he took for granted.

“Tell me Doctor, how is she doing?” Oak asked Catell once everyone was seated with their own cups.

The doctor, a young fellow with bright blue eyes, replied “both the woman who calls herself Lily and her son, Harry, did show evidence of being exposed to the elements, malnutrition from being without food and little water. She is protective to a near frantic degree over her son, who faired a bit better then his mother. Psychologically, outside of her ignorance about historical figures and ignorance of Pokemon, she does have enough memory in other things to be functional such as asking coherent questions, crafting skills, the knowledge that she comes from a far-off location, even if she is not able to say what location specifically, their first names, though not their Family name.”

"That's uniquely selective," Officer Jenny hummed, the slightly suspicious gleam in her eye going unnoticed by the others, but added “she isn’t in the computer system that’s for sure, I’ve sent out inquiries across at least 7 regions, and so far, she's not showing up.”

“What about those scars?” Oak asked, blushing slightly as he recounted, “They were cut into every inch of her and her son’s body for the most part.”

The group was grim, thinking about the implications.

The doctor folded his arms, looking troubled “they are indeed covering most of her body, though judging by the shape of them, the arrangement, I would say they are not so much scars they are etchings. Here,” He brought up a slide, a picture taken of the swirling scar above Lily’s right eye.

“This mark that looks like a Polywhirls swirl? Watch this,” He turned up the zoom to maximum. The group gasped. There were tiny vaguely luminescent symbols that made up the swirl.

 “Who ever did this to her, did a, though horrible in its implications, impressively intricate job that I would not have thought capable of human or Pokémon efforts. There are a few more like this, two on the bottom of mother and son’s feet, one on the solar plexus, and of course the one above the right eye. The rest of the scars appear to be singular symbols in their makeup to the complex ones, and the general scarring of a recently rough life. Not only that, for every symbol placement, they are completely identical, if in a smaller format, on her son. They perfectly match.”

“Oh my!” Nurse Joy gasped softly, “how is that possible?”

“I was hoping you could tell me if there are any Pokémon that might have some ability capable of this? a Psychic or Ghost Pokémon maybe?” The doctor asked Joy and Oak, then hesitantly added, "a...Legendary?"

Joy shook her head, “I’m afraid not Doctor. There are some Pokémon that can manipulate flesh with some detail, but none to that painstaking degree, and of those none that I can think would have any reason to in the first place.”

Oak agreed, but then added, "lore has shown that Legendary Pokemon have taken an interest in certain humans sometimes, but I have never heard of any of them marking humans in such a manner, let alone both mother and child. Still, if I can have a copy of what you showed us I can send it along to a few colleges of mine that specialize in Legendary Pokemon, perhaps they can offer insight."

“Well! We have a mystery on our hands then,” Jenny finally summed up the obvious, “but the question is, what do we do with them? We can’t risk her going out into the world ignorant of Pokémon, and she has no family that we can find. Plus, she has a child in tow, which just complicates matters.”

Chancey nodded in agreement, then said something to Joy who nodded thoughtfully, “Chancey has a suggestion. Why not have her go with Prof. Oak?”

 Oak spat out his coffee coughing, “What?!” he yelped, “Why me?”

 “That’s not a bad idea,” The doctor nodded, “Oak is famous in his studies into Pokémon and human relations, and Lily responds to him somewhat amicably when he visited last, perhaps because he rescued her.”

“He also lives in a relatively quiet town,” Officer Jenny hummed in agreement, “he lives on his own, children all moved out, no wife, no assistant. So, plenty of space for recovery, and exposure to Pokémon in a controlled situation.”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here!” Oak barked, but reluctantly was forced to consider the idea. In part because the others overruled any possible objection, and he had to admit, he was intrigued by the mystery. He also felt a reluctant bout of compassion for the woman. It must be terrifying being in a place where you didn’t understand one of its core fundamental basics such as the relationship between humans and Pokémon.

 It was these reasons that Oak eventually capitulated.

Ooo   ooo  ooo

 Lily had been provided a set of brown khaki trousers, white blouse and a brown sun hat, Harry dressed identically to his mother, and were sitting in the front seat of Prof. Oak’s front seat with Harry gurgling  in a car seat behind her.

 Lily had to admit, being taken in by Prof. Oak, who she had been invited to call Sam, was very generous. She would have been suspicious of the invitation if she hadn’t already pegged the combination of obvious compassion, fascination, and peer-pressure coming off him.

Sam had visited her a few times at the hospice, and so far, there was no obvious threat to him. Also, he was the only person that she even really knew outside of the doctors and authorities in this place. She really had no idea how this world worked, so why not, for a time, stick around and take advantage of this font of knowledge?

Lily finally broke the stained silence that had filled the car for the last while.

“I know you are not keen on me being underfoot, especially with a baby in tow,” Lily began bluntly, nodding when she saw the obviously guilty look, “if this really is to much I can make my own way, perhaps a homeless shelter maybe?”

“Homeless shelter?” Sam frowned, “What’s that? Some sort of Trainer Waystation?”

Lily blinked as she registered that, unless they did something drastic, there wasn’t poverty to the point that the existence of such places was ever needed. It was both awe inspiring and humbling at the same time. Was she just in a rather affluent locale or was this the same all over?

“Goodness!” the doctor exclaimed when she explained the concept, “I’ve never heard of such a thing! Imagine! Living in the streets! Gracious!”

Sam was honestly disturbed by that explanation, confirming her assumption.

‘Well, a check mark in the good section about this new world,’ she mentally hummed.

Oak sighed, “Don’t worry about it. The point is that you have no where else to go, and I am the one most skilled in educating you about Pokémon. We might even be able to even partner one with you!” Oak said, starting to be interested now, “A Chancey-no, maybe not a Chancey,” he corrected himself, remembering the woman’s first reaction to the helpful Pokémon, and there had been that once incident during an early visit when she had nearly skinned one of them with her dinner knife when it went to change her son’s diaper, no perhaps not.

He suddenly realized that he had a prime opportunity here. Imagine educating a competent adult, a protective mothering one at that, from scratch about Pokémon, a blank slate waiting for information! He was very curious how she would react to many of the Pokémon on his ranch and lab. It might even make an interesting paper!

The ultimate human and Pokémon relationship experiment!

He suddenly felt much better about this arrangement.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: this first installment is technically already done, it just needs massive editing.


	4. Host and Guests

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pokemon and people mentioned in this fic will be from various game generations and seasons of the television show or movies.

Chapter 4

Lily was feeling less guilty about infringing on Sam’s space when she slapped eyes on Pallet Town.

The man’s home town was a picturesque place of rolling hills with fields of wild flowers, and fields of berry trees and surrounded by forests with a few small lakes, ponds and rivers.

Not only was it relatively small and out of the way, there were only two ways into the town, Route 1 which connects to the much larger Viridian City, and one of the rivers which connected to the far distant strip of gleaming blue that was the local sea coast, dubbed Route 21, was the southerly access via boat or water Pokemon and the only known access to Cinnibar Island.

She knew that this would be the place to achieve her goal. It was secluded but not to isolated that her son would grow up sticking out from other children, and with limited access points and forests deeming with potentially dangerous local wildlife, it was as good as any to settle in.

Sam’s home was a sprawling Ranch with the main house and lab formed into a rather quaint wind mill, sat on a little hill just outside of town. Once she got a good look and the hundreds of various creatures in the paddocks and flying in the skies as they drove up the long drive way, she was both amazed and exceptionally weary at the variety and potential dangers. Sam had told her about trainers and starter Pokémon on the ride over. She had been appalled that the norm in this place was to place creatures of potential elemental-based destruction in their hands to journey out in the world and face down potentially even more powerful creatures.

Perhaps people were made sturdier in this world? It would explain the lack of concern over bodily safety.

Seeing her horrified look, the man had explained patiently that battling was necessary in helping to form the bond between trainer and Pokémon, learning about them, and through the battles becoming stronger so they could evolve, another concept that boggled her mind. She was at least reassured that Pokémon battling wasn’t the main staple of the society, that there were other, less violent fields.

The thing that had fascinated her about the process though had been the Pokeballs. Some sort of sophisticated scientific version of a shrinking and enlarging charm, perhaps an expanded space on the inside.

She had been especially talented in Charms in her old life and had been a Charms Master while working for the Unspeakables. The intellectual in her was interested in taking the balls apart and seeing how they ticked, especially as they functioned somehow without the aide of magic.

She was provided a spare room on the second floor above the lab, given a schedule of Sam’s usual daily routine, a few books to read that looked like picture books for children on Pokémon, and was left alone, the man muttering happily about some Duotrio find or something, whatever that was.

She sat on the simple twin bed and stared out the window, wondering at the direction her life had taken. Despite what she had done, what she had sacrificed, and the uncertainties that lay before her, she had to admit, that she oddly didn’t regret where it had brought her.

Lily’s eyes strayed to a bird that glowered at her from its perch on her window sill, a thing of red and black with a tan rough around the face. The sour disapproval in its eye and gleam of cunning intelligence, suddenly gave her a twinge of nostalgia as she was reminded of Severus quite suddenly.

Well, alright there were some regrets perhaps, if not in where she had ended up then what she had left behind, things that she would have liked to rectify, but for now she could only move forward with what she had left.

“Well Harry,” She said to her son, “I never thought that I would ever be studying again, I have a lot to learn.”

She blinked again when the bird cawed “Spearrow!” at her, pulling a face before flying off.

“Maybe a little of Sirius in that thing as well,” she said dryly as she opened the first book on the pile.

 Ooo    ooo    ooo

  _Lily’s Second day..._

 Lily woke early the next day to a face full of sunshine.

 At first, she was confused. How did sunshine of all things penetrate the perpetual gloom of the Blight? Had the dementors finally moved on?

 Her eyes blinked open, taking in the small cozy room in pastel greens, the woolly blanket, and the old but sturdy oak crib beside her bed where Harry was standing up and waving at her.

 She relaxed as memory returned. Right, she was in a new world, and at Sam’s.

 She yawned, stretching, and as she had come to do since her arrival in this world to a moment to enjoy the warmth on her bare skin.

 She muzzily grabbed the toiletries that had been given to her by that kind Nurse Joy, picked up Harry and tromped to the bathroom Sam had shown her at the end of the hallway.

Ooo  ooo  ooo

Oak groaned as he wiped the sludge from his face.

It served him right he supposed. He should have ducked instead of swerved when trying to sneak up on a Koffin with a syringe full of medicine.

He pulled off his lab coat, tossing it in the laundry with the giant pile of identical soiled garments, and grabbed a clean one with an extra set of cloths.

He tromped up the stairs, grabbing his toiletries and making for the bathroom. He paused outside the closed door of his spare bedroom and wondered if his new guest was still asleep. It was awfully quiet in there. Should he check in on her?

Oak shook his head and scolded himself firmly.

“No Oak old fellow! It may have been awhile since you were living with someone else, but you can still remember your manners.”

Oak nodded, “That’s right Oak,” he told himself out loud heading towards the bathroom, “I shall be the utmost gentlemen and host.”

He opened the bathroom door vigorously, a determined air about him to get clean and perhaps scrounge up some breakfast for his new guests.

He froze when he found Lily sitting in a bathtub full of bubbles in the middle of washing her son’s hair with gentle hands. She blinked at him startled, Harry squealed “Tree man! Tree man!”

Oak’s face turned a never seen shade of red and losing all composure, he screamed apologies and ran out the door, closing it behind him, panting hard as he leaned against the sturdy wood.

“This gentleman business is hard,” he moaned, slumping against a wall.

There was silence for a moment, then the sound of water sluishing, and wet feet slapping against linoleum, from directly on the other side of the barrier Lily’s amused/worried voice called out.

“Sam are you OK?”

Oak scrambled back and his eyes bugged out when Lily slammed open the door, suds dripping from her hair and staring at him in concern with her hands on her hips, “do you need me to call the doctor or something? I don’t think its normal to gush fountains of red from your nose like that.”

Lily shook her head when the man retreated hastily towards his own bedroom, the door slamming behind him and trailing blood.

She sighed, “Well I suppose if he’s that rambunctious he’s alright, though seriously, that man looks like he needs a good blood replenishing potion, and a calming drought.”

She returned to her bath, Harry squealing happily from under her arm.

Ooo  ooo  ooo

 When Lily and Harry were dressed in the magically cleaned cloths she had left the hospital with, she padded down the stairs with Harry strapped in brand new harness that had been provided by the hospital for her and went to explore.

She didn’t see Sam in the small kitchen, but she remembered him telling her to help herself the night before, and decided that maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to make them all something to eat in gratitude for the man taking her in. She admittedly wasn’t the best cook, that had been more James’ territory, she thought with a slight pang, but she was passable on a few basic meals, and she had made the decision to try to be helpful around the place during her stay.

It had been a bit since she had worked in a modern muggle kitchen, and there were a few things she didn’t recognize even from the days of her mother’s state of the art kitchen, but the stove looked relatively the same in functionality. In fact, it looked practically new...and it was, she found the instructions still taped to the control panel, though judging by the dust it had never been used.

Lily shook her head, “does this man only eat sandwiches or something?”

Deciding that making a soup would be relatively safe, she wiped off the dust, pulled out the instructions for the stove, and set about putting a large, also good as new pot on to boil with water. 

Harry was currently amusing himself by playing with a small mountain of bows that had still been attached to said kitchen gear. ‘There was a hopeless set of gifts,’ She mused to herself exasperatedly as she opened the fridge. 

She stared when all she found was a shelf stocked with beige cubes she recognized as tofu and perched in the center was a creature with a cone shaped body and back features in a gesture that looked like it was cold, but expression read content. On the bottom shelf was something she recognized from her readings as a Swinub, the brown ball fluff hugging a bottle of orange juice. 

She carefully closed the door. Yes, this was something that she was going to have to get used to.

Further investigation revealed that Oak apparently lived off Ramen noodles and the tofu that was in the refrigerator. Everything else was various forms of Pokémon food.

“Merlin’s balls! If this is all we eat, we’ll be as fat as Vernon!” She growled, “For a smart guy, he certainly doesn’t know how to take care of himself!”

She slammed them closed and after searching the entire place, finally found one solitary can of peas behind more instant noodles, and a dusty spice rack with vials of spices attached.

She tossed in the peas and some spices into the pot, worked up her nerve and managed to extract some tofu from the fridge, tossed in a package of noodles, putting it all on a low simmer, and grumbling picked her son up and went searching for Oak.

She found the man, obviously over whatever fit had overtaken him, taping away at a large sophisticated looking computer in an admittedly impressive looking laboratory bursting at the gills with evidence of his research.

She wasn’t daunted however, she was rather steamed by this point and marched over and grabbed his ear and yanking him off his chair.

“Hey!” Sam yelped, “what’s the big idea! Let go!” 

“Did you or did you not tell me in all your lecturing about Pokémon that it was not going to be a hardship to keep Harry and I on?” Lily demanded.

“I said it was fine! Let me go already!”

She let him go, and Oak straightened, rubbing his red ear, the Crabby in the aquarium on his desk waved its pincers appreciatively in Lily’s direction.

Lily stuck her fists on her hips, eyes narrow, “Obviously I can’t impose on someone who is clearly in some sort of dire straights!” Lily snapped back.

Oak, still rubbing his ear, was confused, “What are you talking about?”

Lily jerked a thumb over her shoulder, “I just saw your fridge and cupboards! If you’re in some sort of financial tight spot you should have been honest with me!” 

Oak blinked, then felt affronted, “I’m not in some sort of financial crisis! I am the worlds most famous Pokemon researcher! I get grants and donations in my mail practically every day! I could support an entire village easily if I wanted to!”

Lily quirked an eyebrow, “then why is your cupboards filled with cheap noodles and tofu?”

“Oh that, that’s what I usually eat,” he laughed, relieved to have finally cleared the matter up.

Suddenly his ear, the same one in the exact same iron pinch was yet again applied, and he was dragged out of his office, “What kind of person with a modicum of brains, who has enough money to support a village if he wants to, eats nothing but tofu and ramen noodles?! Your lucky you haven’t died of a heart attack! Your cholesterol must be through the roof! Well I’m not about to have a person as kind hearted as you kill himself just because he’s to lazy to learn how to properly take care of himself!”

“Wait!” he pleaded frantically as she grabbed his coat, wallet and care keys, tossing them in with doctor Oak into the car, “my experiments!”

Lily paused, “Are any of them in a dangerous or vital stage at the moment?” 

“No...” he whimpered, “But I was just about to scan the DNA strand of a shiny Pigey from New Bark town and-oof!”

He spluttered as he was elbowed deeper into the car while the woman belted him in behind the wheel, then did the same to her son.

“Then it can wait! Now drive!”

Oak whimpered, a defeated, “yes ma’am.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The pokemon Lily encountered are Spearow, Snorunt, and Swinub.


	5. Agreements

Delia Ketchum chuckled as her little Ash gave Melinda Oak’s young Gary the stink eye. Said toddler was smiling smugly as it tossed Ash’s favorite Snorlax miniature in his tiny hands.

“The boys sure are energetic today!” Melinda chortled. The two women had bumped into each other at the supermarket and were currently chatting while cheeking watermelons for ripeness.

“They always do seem to be when they are around each other, “Delia replied, as Ash made another failed attempt at retrieving his filched toy.

The blond-haired woman chuckled in agreement.

Then both women paused in their conversation when a stunning sight meant their eyes. 

“Is that Prof. Oak?” Delia gaped, “in a supermarket?”

“On the arm of a beautiful woman?” Melinda goggled at her father in-law.

In fact, the sight of the infamous Professor, who was never really seen in places like a supermarket, had many of the other townspeople also in the store whispering behind their hands, especially when they spotted the shockingly short haired wiry woman with vibrant green eyes, dark hair, and fearsome looking marks practically hand cuffing Oak to the shopping cart.

“Oh! Just look at her baby!” Delia cooed, spotting the red messy hair and big green eyes.

“Does…does that baby have tattoos?” Melinda gasped, scandalized.

“Maybe their foreigners?” Delia hummed, “they certainly have that air about them.”

Then Melinda gasped in horror, as the only possibility as to why her reclusive relative would be in such a place, in such company “You don’t think…. well, that my father in-law got that poor girl in the family way, do you?”

Delia, who also couldn’t think of a good reason for the sight before her, gasped in dismay, “Goodness! Do you think so?”

Melinda clinched her fist, eyes flaming, “I knew that absent minded workaholic scientist persona he puts on couldn’t be all of it! Why I bet when no one is looking he’s a randy old man!”

Melinda plowed her cart forward determinedly, and Delia followed.

The two women soon had Oak’s cart blocked.

‘Oh thank goodness!’ Oak thought in tearful relief, ‘Delia and Melinda! They came to rescue me!’

Suddenly he smacked repeatedly upside the head, once by a Zucchini, the second by a turnip.

“How dare you! And a man your age should know better!” Delia scolded, Smack! Smack!.

“Ow! Ow! Ow!”

“What sort of example are you setting for your grandson?!” Melinda flamed, before she dropped the turnip and suddenly struck a tragic pose, hands clasped to her breast, “Oh how can I tell my darling husband that his cad of a father has given him a baby brother born out of wedlock?!”

Oak began to panic as he waved his arms around frantically shaking his head, “no wait! he’s not mine I swear!”

Both women turned flaming eyes on Oak, who preyed for a quick death as his spirit attempted to leave his body in preparation.

“Um excuse me?” Lily barked, hands on her hips, “just who are you?” 

“Oh, how rude, of me!” Melinda gasped, turning compassionate friendly eyes to the other woman, taking Lily’s hand, “I am Melinda Oak! But you needn’t worry about formalities between us since we’re going to be family soon!”

“I’m Delia Ketchum, a friend of the family!” The other woman chirped.

Oak let the cereal shelf support his weight and thought idly that his departing soul looked like the Wobafet on the Crispy-O’s.

Lily blinked at the whiplash emotions of the tall blond before her, “Erm, hello I guess.  I’m Lily, no last name required, nice to meet you, but I think you’re under a misconception...”

_10 minutes later after an explanation near the rice cakes..._

“Oh, how silly of me!” Melinda laughed, “I should have known that my father-in-law couldn’t have possibly ended up with such a beautiful looking person such as yourself!” 

“Oh yes! Our dear Oak is a bit of a slowbro when it comes to romance!” Delia chuckled fondly.

“I’m right here you know!” Oak sniffed, while his grandson patted his arm consolingly.

“I think its brilliant that your staying with my father in-law,” Melinda commented, “He needs a someone other then Pokémon around him 24/7.”

“Oh I agree!” Delia nodded, “why just look at him, already he’s shopping in a grocery store like us regular common folk! How ever did you coax him away from his research?”

“I was in a pinch,” Oak muttered, rubbing his still red ear forlornly. By this point he had resigned himself to his fate and pushed the cart behind the three women, Delia and Melinda guiding Lily through what the store had to offer. Oak, whose cart had been converted into the children’s cart and him babysitting duty, while the other two held the growing pile of food, grumpily looked heavenward and longingly thought of those rare Pokemon DNA strands just waiting for him to unlock in his lab.

His daydreams were halted though when he felt a tug on his sleeve.

It was little Ash, his big brown eyes staring up at him. The rather rambunctious toddler was always gumming on a pokeball whenever Delia came to visit him, though he was never sure how he always managed to get his grubby little mitts on one of them.

Delia had been a student of his back in the day, along with he husband. His hands tightened perceptively on the cart handles, someone who had gone to try to become a Pokémon master, and had not been heard from in over a year.

Oak turned his thoughts away from that little dark corner and focused on the boy, “What is it Ash?” Gary who was standing in the bed of the cart next to Ash, pointed to the basket.

Oak nearly shrieked when he saw that the front basket, which had held his third charge only moments ago, was empty. 

Quickly he took a corner to escape the still deep in discussion women, and frantically began searching for the familiar head of messy red hair.

They were all going to kill him if all three mothers realized he had lost a child! Especially Lily! 

Oak sighed in relief when he spotted Harry clinging to the side of another shopping cart nearby, the little mankey! Said cart resting nearby the produce section filled to the brim with a mountain of fruit.

Oak strode over and was about to pick up the toddler, when out of the large mountain of apples inside the cart an Arbok, with its frill wide open appeared, hissing at him in warning.

Apparently there was a snake pokemon trainer out for supplies, that had temporarily left their shopping to fetch something.

Arbok were normally not harmful to humans after they are captured, provided the trainer wasn’t sicking one on some hapless chap that is, but they were territorial, especially when a food source was in question.

Apparently this one was of a mind that Oak was indeed infringing on its property.

Before the snake Pokémon could strike, Oak dove for Harry, pulling the child away just in time to get a bite to the buttock for his trouble.

Oak yelped in pain as he ran back and forth, the giant snake dangling determinedly from his backside and trying to wrap the man in its giant coils.  Harry giggling above his head, then yelling further when the Arbok trainer, a tiny old woman, began hitting him with her cane, accusing him of bothering her precious Oswald.

Ooo   ooo  ooo

By the time he had managed to extract himself from the situation, he staggered back to the group who had remained unaware fortunately, all the children accounted for and fast asleep in the basket, curled up next to each other.

Melinda turned around and spotted Oak limping along behind them looking flustered and utterly miserable.

“Humph. He’s such a drama queen, look at him! Its just shopping! You’d think at the way he looks he’s been through some sort of attack or something.”

“Its all that,” Lily nodded knowledgeably, “you eat enough salty cheap noodles and your brain will start to go.”

Ooo  ooo ooo

Some time near the end of the first week that she had begun living with Oak, the man eventually noticed that noticed that Lily was still wearing the same cloths that she had left the hospital with.

Oak rubbed the back of his head when the realization came and felt down right guilty over not noticing before. Not that Lily herself seemed to have a problem with it, but he felt like a heel when he realized that, since of course she didn’t have any spare sets on her. She was literally found with nothing to her name beyond her child. How exactly was she supposed to have extra cloths?

The only thing wearable she had ever insisted on him buying was the diapers for Harry.

Thinking about cloths also made him think about other necessities. It had been a long time since he had lived in a bustling household, and there were other things needed that he was probably overlooking. Thinking about all of it suddenly just all clicked in that he was responsible for not only helping this woman get on her feet from scratch, but that he had a child dependent on him as well!

So, when Lily dragged him away from his work for lunch soon after those realizations, he surprised her by, instead of complaining about the disruption, he thanked her for the meal, something she called Macaroni and Cheese. 

Lily actually at that grinned and Oak blushed slightly.

Oak offered to help her with the dishes, but she just shooed him off to his DNA strands and nighttime Pokemon feedings. 

When he was done for the evening, he found Lily sitting in front of the fire with her son on her lap reading to him from the picture books he had given her.

“Look luv, its that giant caterpillar we saw, remember?”

Oak took his favorite arm chair and asked curiously, “what’s a caterpillar?”

“Oh, its nothing,” the woman said casually, then changed the subject, “did everything go alright?”

He nodded as he went over his notes while Lily continued to amuse her child.

When he was done he called her attention.

“Lily, I know that perhaps things must be very trying time for you right now, and I admittedly have not been the best of host,” He waved his hand, silencing her protests, “No, I have been a bad host, no doubt about it.”

Oak sighed, setting aside his work, and leaned back, “You see, its been many years since my wife and son lived with me. Amelia and I...well, we parted ways many years ago, both of us to vested in our careers, and Brude, my son, he left home for Pokémon Tech at 10 and pretty much took up residency there, and hasn’t left, in fact he’s Dean now,” he chuckled to himself, “Delia drags me over for dinner once in awhile, and other then talking with trainers over videophones, or the same old spiel with eager new trainers, or conversations with contemporaries, its hard to look outside of Pokémon and see other things. And one of those things I have been ignoring lately is just how dire your situation is right now, but I would like to rectify some of my error by offering you an opportunity.” 

He handed Lily a sheet of paper. Lily took it, stared down at it blankly, then rather awkwardly cleared her throat, “Thank you, but I...” her voice trailed off.

“Oh, I assure you its a legitimate offer!” Oak hastily reassured, “Its not binding, you can quit at anytime.”

“Oh um, its not...the thing is,” she coughed again, and blushed, “I... can’t read it.”

There was an awkward silence, then Oak said “Oh...well I’ll read it then,” Lily smiled gratefully for not commenting on her illiteracy, then handed it back as he began to read, blushing in mortification at her admittance, but Oak politely didn’t say anything on that particular point.

“Ahem! This is a contract formally offering Lily...er I don’t know your last name so...er, well continuing! - the job of House Caretaker and when needed, Lab Assistant, to Prof. Samuel Oak, Pokémon Researcher for an agreed period. In return, Lily will receive room, board, food and wages until such time as she feels the need to move on.”

Lily stared at him then asked hesitantly, “Your...offering me a job?”

Oak fidgeted awkwardly, “I am.”

Then he ‘oofed!’ as the exuberant woman pulled into an energetic hug. He was quite ruffled when she pulled back and pulled the contract back towards her and signed it where she was told to.

The man pulled it over and paused before signing, eyeing the way she had signed her name. The swoops and curls of her name made no sense to him. He had never seen marks quite like them. ‘She must be foreign! But wherever she is from, it must be so far its outside of any region that I know of! No wonder she can’t read! If her language looks like that in written form! Its a miracle she can speak my language so fluently!’

“How long shall I put for the contract to last? It doesn’t have to be definite we can re-negotiate...”

“Would 10 months and 2 weeks be alright?” The woman asked.

Oak blinked ‘that’s a weirdly specific time slot,’ but he put it down anyway and signed it. He folded it up and slipped it into his pocket to store later.

Then Lily smiled again, there was something suddenly something slightly ominous in the way she eyed her surroundings that told him that things were going to be very different indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The pokemon mentioned are Arbok and the briefly mentioned Caterpi, the bug pokemon she dropped in the Safari Zone.


	6. Theives and Ghosts.

Once Oak had become aware of the shortage of cloths and other supplies for his new house guest, he had told Lily, keeping in mind her pride and carefully not saying why, told her that her first pay day just happened to coincide with the next day.

Oak arranged for Lily and Delia to go out together, particularly as Lily didn’t know how to use the local currency yet, and the friendly woman was all to happy to take Lily out.

Oak spent a relatively peaceful day seeing to the Pokémon and his research, even sneaking a cup of ramen noodles without Lily’s hawk eyes on the cupboard that currently had an impressive looking padlock on it. Not that it didn’t stop the wily researcher, he was quite proficient at picking locks after all.

When Lily returned, she was practically glowing. She was dressed in creamy white shorts, showing off a fair amount of marked, though shapely muscular legs, smart sneakers, and a purple blouse with white flowers.

Her son was in a Pikachu onesie, by the looks of the coloring and ears on the hood and the tail dangling from his bottom. Of course, Delia’s Ash hadn’t escaped the cosplay and was currently wearing an identical outfit.

The women put the children down and they began to toddle around, pulling each other’s tails.

There was a pause when Lily passed by the locked ramen cupboard, and Oak felt sweat gather, holding his breath, only to breath a sigh of relief when she continued to the upstairs floor where she put away her things.

Oak and Delia shared some small talk, occasionally picking up the boys when they were venturing towards something valuable (Oak made a mental note to baby proof) and Delia gushed over their day.

“Oh, it was simply delightful!” the woman sighed, “I haven’t had a day out like that in awhile, even if the boys were with us. With Melinda so busy with her paintings, and me so busy with Ash and work at the restaurant, I don’t see her quite as often.”

“Well I’m glad that you both enjoyed yourselves, and Lily needed both the supplies and the company.”

“She did poor dear,” Delia sighed, “Has she said anything about her past?”

Oak shook his head, “No. She says she doesn’t remember a lot of it, but there are times...sometimes she’ll let something slip...I think she remembers more then she is letting on, but whatever she is hiding, she is still to afraid to share.”

“Well, she’ll tell us when she’s ready. All we can do is give her the space to come to that realization.”

Oak nodded in agreement and they went on to discuss work.

The grand opening of her restaurant in a few weeks, and extracted a promise from Oak to attend, and bring Lily along.

They were soon joined by Lily who laughed at the boys rolling around each other. She was distracted however when something on Oak’s lapel caught her eye.

Oak started when her hand shot out and pulled off something brittle and slightly curly from his shoulder.

She glared at him, crushing the noodle between two fingers.

“Saaaam!” she growled. 

Oak eeeked and ran as Lily gave chase, pulling out a white fan that Delia had bought her to help deal with the summer heat, and gave chase.

Ooo                 ooo                  ooo

“Come on Lily, its really quite gentle I assure you,” Oak coaxed as the suspicious eyed woman hovered at the threshold of the paddock, “its really just a puppy.”

Lily eyed the Pokémon that looked like a cross between a tiger and a St.Benard.

The Pokémon barked “Growlith!” enthusiastically.

“That’s just a puppy?” she tittered nervously, and mentally thought that Hagrid would have loved this place, a lot.

“Oh yes, quite friendly! Its trainer is quite good, so its quite patient.”

Lily privately tipped her hat to the individual that was going to be dealing with the adult version of this creature someday. There was nothing safe in her mind about a giant fire breathing canine.

Eventually Lily was coaxed into approaching closer and she had to admit, after the first hesitant pat, and the affectionate barks of the Pokémon that rolled onto its back, asking for tummy rubs, that perhaps it wasn’t so bad after all.

“I suppose this isn’t to bad,” Lily concluded, chuckling when the creature shot her puppy dog eyes when she paused in her scratching and continued.

“See? I told you, perfectly fine!” Oak mentally patted himself on the back, he had made the best choice in introductory Pokémon for the nervous and reluctant woman.

The Growlith was enjoying the attention as it contentedly snapped up Pokémon treats that were tossed in its direction, that is until a Rattata leaped above its face, snatching one of its treats out of the air, and ran off with it.

Growlith sprang to its feet and let out a spray of flame after the dodging purple rodent, incensed.

Oak groaned when Lily instinctively snatched up a nearby rake, grabbed her boy, who had been napping on a blanket nearby, and hastily made for the cover of mossy rocks nearby the pond area.

Back to the drawing board.

Ooo   ooo   ooo

It was an hour passed midnight and Lily had sleepily gone to check on Oak and make sure the man was using his bed and not sleeping on that orange monstrosity that dared call itself furniture in the library.

Sure enough, she found the man zonked out with his limbs at awkward angles snoring loud enough to wake the dead, face planted on his keyboard. 

In this state she had learned that the man was a supremely heavy sleeper. It would take an entire flock of pigeotto’s to wake him up.

Sighing, she rolled up her sleeves and lugged the man over her shoulder easily with e application of a levitating charm and began the trek to tuck him in bed yet again, something that was becoming the usual since she had started officially working for him.

She was passing through the patio that was the connection point between the lab, paddock, and house proper when she noticed a light on in the pokeball storage area.

She huffed, “Really he should learn to turn off his lights. His electric bill must be enormous!’

She entered the vast vault, looking for the switch, only to freeze when two strangers dressed head to toe in black caught her eyes, who were also frozen, caught.

Lily didn’t even think. She dropped Oak like a sack of potatos, visions of dark clad Death Eaters skulking in the shadows, eager smiles thirsting for her and her son’s life filling her brain.

The men didn’t have a chance to reach for their pokeballs to defend themselves.

They were smashed into the wall behind them, the force leaving sizable dents as they were raised off their feet by sharp fingered hands, vulnerable throats vibrating under her fingers, pulses frantically pumping.

It would be so easy...so easy...like that potions master, she had to, she had to protect Harry...

Her head whipped around when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

She sent the men sailing into the air and crashing into the shelves and raised her fist, about to drive it into the next attacker’s face...only to freeze when he caught the familiar features, a voice calling her name “Lily!”.

Her hand froze an inch from Sam’s nose, fist trembling.

Awareness returned and she dropped her hand, taking a step back, “Sam?” she asked, still a little buzzed on protective mode.

“Yes Lily,” Oak said carefully, “thank you for stopping the thieves.”

“Thieves?” she asked hazily, looking from one unconscious body to the other, confused, “not Death Eaters?”

Oak didn’t know what death eaters were, but replied, “No Lily, just very surprised Pokémon thieves. Thank you for saving the Pokémon. Would you mind calling Officer Jenny for me while I clean up?”

Lily nodded and wandered off, muttering to herself.

Oak sighed in relief when the woman left. He moved quickly, checking to make sure that the two men were still alive, and relived to find a pulse on both. He removed their pokeballs. He released a Bulbasaur and a Growlith to keep an eye on the unconscious men as he went check on that call for the police.

As he suspected, Lily hadn’t called, and when he went to check on her, he found her holding Harry, hidden in a closet, the baby was unusually silent and there was something...knowing in those young eyes.

He put Lily to bed, Oak holding Harry when the boy clung to him and wouldn’t let go, and went to talk to Officer Jenny who pulled up in front of the house.

“Wow,” Pallet Town’s Officer Jenny whistled, staring at the body sized dents in the wall and the beat up terrified Pokémon thieves who were begging to be taken into custody.

“You say that Lily, that assistant of yours, did all that? What is she, part manchoke?”

“Yes well, she is quite protective you see, er...”

Harry pointed to the men being carted out in stretchers by the ambulance, “Det eaters!” the boy proclaimed solemnly, sticking his thumb in his mouth and burying his face into Oak’s shoulder.

“What?” Jenny asked, confused.

“Oh nothing!” Prof. Oak exclaimed hastily, “listen...I know this is unorthodox, but would you mind not interrogating Lily? she’s not in the best of frames and...I think it s best that we put this behind us as quickly as possible.”

Officer Jenny didn’t look happy about it, but the thieves were caught red handed, and Oak had witnessed what had happened after he had woke up after being dropped, she supposed she could bend the rules just a bit, this time.

She nodded, much to Oaks immense relief.

The next morning, Lily and Oak left for a playdate for Harry, Ash and Garry.

While she seemed to remember what had happened the previous night, she didn’t talk about the incident Oak had witnessed, and when a few weeks had past, it would seem almost ridiculous, the friendly exuberant Lily holding two men twice her size by their necks and tossing them aside as if they were crumpled tissue.

But Oak had only to look at the freshly painted patches of his recently repaired wall, and he would flash onto bright green eyes looking at him, if only briefly, before she knew it was him, with such pure rage and desperation...the cold knowledge of death that rested in its promise an inch from his face...yes, what little hair that had not been grey by that point was lost that night.

Ooo   ooo   ooo

The day that Lily met the ghost Pokémon, a small group of them recently acquired by a trainer and sent to Oak, Lily had been making dinner, only to be rudely surprised by a Gangar jumping out of the pot she was stirring, scaring the life out of her, then she found a Ghastley juggling her happily giggling son along with a mixing spoon and her favorite hat.

Her shriek brought Oak out of the sitting room where he was going through his taxes, pens and pencils sticking out of his frazzled hair.

“Lily? What’s wrong?! Oh!” Oak took in the scene of two ghost Pokémon playing keep away with her son.

“Gangar! Ghastily! You give that woman back her son or you go back in your pokeballs is that clear?” he said sternly. The Pokémon sulked, grumbling, but complied and phased through the walls after returning Harry to Lily.

Lily hugged Harry close to her chest, the toddler looking rather disappointed at the loss of his new playmates.

“Poltergeists!” Lily breathed, “you have poltergeists?!”

“Poltergeists?” Oak asked, confused by the term.

“Ghosts!” she snarled, glaring holes at the spot the Pokémon had vanished, “Mischievous spirits!”

“Oh! Yes, I suppose that we haven’t covered ghost Pokémon in our lessons yet. Yes, ghost Pokémon are mischievous,” Oak chuckled, “I apologize if they startled you, recent additions from a trainer.”

Lily didn’t look amused.

She got up from the table, handing her sulking son to Oak and reached into a drawer and pulled out a rather deadly looking knife.

“Lily?” he asked nervously.

“Take Harry to the basement and stay there for the next hour,” she said in an authoritive tone. Oak was about to protest, but there was something in her eye that brooked no argument.

Oak gulped and did as he was told.

He sat on a case of empty pokeballs, Harry amusing himself with one by his feet.

“What’s she going to do? Try to stab a ghost Pokémon? But that’s silly...” he shook his head, he was being paranoid. She was likely just wanting some space to cool off and finish dinner. After all, even if such a whimsical thought was true, there was no way a person could harm a ghost Pokémon like that.

When the hour was up, he gathered Harry up and went to see if Lily had cooled off.

He was relieved when he found Lily calmly stirring a new pot of soup, humming to herself, no knife in sight.

He did notice her bandaged hand.

“Are you alright?” he asked in concern.

“Oh this? Just a cut, I’m fine, why don’t you get Harry ready for dinner while I finish this off?”

Glad that his last assumption had been true, and she hadn’t gone on some sort of vengeful rampage, he again did as requested humming to himself.

He didn’t notice the tiny red runes etched into every corner of the house, hidden from notice by slightly re-arranged furniture or careful placement of carpet.

Meanwhile outside the house, confused ghost Pokémon found themselves rebuffed from walls that refused to cede for the first time ever.

Oak eventually did notice the odd behavior and wonder why the ghost Pokémon seemed unusually interested in the walls of his home, yet never came inside again, and spent an interesting week that they were with him studying the unusual phenomena.


	7. Feathers and Pokeballs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second last chap for the fic.

Over time, Lily contented her self with taking care of the house, dragging Oak into some sort of semblance of a healthy diet, and most of all Harry, though occasionally going for visits to Delia’s, or walking out to the open fields and forests that filled and surrounded Pallet Town.

She felt sun on her skin and smelled life in her nose and came to terms that she really didn’t have to run anymore. Voldemort, Dumbledore, the War...it was no longer something she would ever have to worry about it.

Some part of her still lingered on the what if’s, but as time fell further away from those dark frantic months, the constant tension that lived in her bones, always waiting on the edge to spring into action in case of danger, began to unwind o the point that she had the singularly odd sensation of feeling completely relaxed one day.

Oak and Delia, her new friends, learned to respect her space during those moments when she was coming to terms with everything. Then she would go off by herself, displaying her trust in leaving Harry with Delia or Oak. She was grateful that they didn’t question her on these moments.

Lily would sometimes even laugh or cry or both during those private walks, though she could not rightly understand why.

Ooo    ooo     ooo

Lily was eating a picnic in the backyard overlooking a pen of heard based Pokemon while keeping an eye on Harry, Ash, and Gary when a demanding caw caught her attention.

She turned to find the familiar Spearow that constantly watched her through the window every morning.

It suddenly puffed up its feathers and pointed a wing over Lily's shoulder.

Started, she turned around to find the threat, tense, only to blink when she realized there was nothing more then a snoring Butterfree in a nearby tree.

She turned just in time to witness her sandwich disappear down the Pokemon's throat.

Lily, far from being angered, raised her brow at the bird, which seemed to be daring her to retaliate.

"Well then," Lily hummed, and other then swirling her fingers at the the bird, otherwise didn't react in the explosive annoyance or anger that the bully of the Bird Pokemon world had come to expect, in fact the human looked down right amused.

The Spearow, annoyed that it didn't illicit the usual expected reactions from the human, huffed disgustedly and flew off to roost in its nest at the top most of the windmill.

The next morning the Spearow flew down to one of the many bird washes on the property, of a mind to enjoy a good long soak while the water was still cool from the evening to beat the heat that was already promising to be a scorcher, when the Master Stealer of Sandwiches happened to gaze down at his reflection in the still pool.

The symphony of sqwacks and growls filled the backyard.

Curious Pokemon poked their heads from whatever spot they were sleeping in, only to witness in some surprise to find the fearsome terror of Oak's Ranch lying in a dead faint at the base of a bird bath, his glorious black, red and tan feathers were a bright florescent pink.

ooo ooo ooo

A few days later...

"I'm not saying that I'm not happy that you've finally made a friend with a Pokemon Lily," Oak said wearily as he eyed the Pokemon glowering fiercely at him from over Lily's shoulder where it was perched on the back of her chair at the dinner table one evening, "but a Spearrow?!"

The bird displayed a wing father in a manner that gave him the strong impression that he was being flipped off.

"And THAT spearrow in particular."

"Severus?" Lily chuckled, rubbing the bird under his beak who churred contently, "We worked out our differences, and he really is a sweet heart once you give him a chance."

Oak eyed the Pokemon who, when Lily was distracted with Harry, gave him an "I'm watching you" gesture with one wing, while running the tip of his other across his throat.

"Perhaps," Oak said a little faintly, and concentrated on his meatloaf.

ooo ooo oo

Lily sat back in relief as she wiped her brow.

she had been staying with Oak for nearly 7 months now, and in an effort to not go mad with boredom, she had taken to her initial interest in Pokeballs and had decided to make a steady of them and see if she could build her own.

She's had to make a special trip all the way to the person who crew the special trees that provided the nuts for hte various different types of pokeballs. She was fascinated by the various functions and possibilities to be had with them.

She looked down at her finished product with no small amount of satisfaction.

It was a plain, muddy color with sparks of reds, greens, golds, and greys. It wasn't the prettiest thing out there, but she knew without a doubt that her pokeball would do what it was functioned to do even if it was butt ugly.

She held up the ball towards the Pokemon in her bedroom, currently settled on a large green silken pillow next to a sturdy gunmetal perch and a dish full of various poke treats and berries.

"What do you think Severus?" she asked the Pokemon.

The Spearow eyed the thing that he supposed was supposed to be a pokeball, thought it didn't look fit to drop on the heads of Ratatta, but his human was a genius after all, so he supposed it was supposed to do whatever it was designed to, so it made a "so-so" gesture with his wing.

Lily rolled her eyes, huffing, "everyone's a critic."

She trailed her fingers over the smoothed edges, feeling the odd ripple in the texture of the surface where the various ingredients had been melded together using he magic, which had become more proficient in wandless since her time here.

"I want something to leave Harry," She told Severus, who turned to watch her silently, "some sort of legacy from me, even if it is only my eyes and this pokeball."

Severus let out a serious "-rrrow."


	8. Flowers and Farewells

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, this is the last chap of the prequel.

One cold January morning, Lily awoke to find that the marks on her body were glowing.

Her heart stuttered as she realized what this meant.

She closed her eyes, allowing a brief moment to gather her self, before she opened them, and got out of bed.

She padded to Sam’s room and slipped in side on silent feet, shaking him awake.

It took awhile but the man finally reluctantly peeled one eye open, then the other, and when he registered that there was a beautiful woman in a nightgown leaning over him with his bedroom light back lighting her just so...

He yelped as he fell out of bed, holding his blanket in front of his body, “Lily! I thought we talked about you sneaking up on me!”

The woman chuckled, “Come on old man, get up.”

Oak grumbled, pinching his nose to stem the nosebleed, “Why should I?” he said nasally, “it isn’t even sunrise yet!”

“Because there’s a lot to do, and we need to start early.”

When Oak had dragged himself down stairs, he was surprised to find Delia waiting.

“Delia’s offered to watch over the center today,” Lily told him before he could ask, “here” she tossed him his coat, she was already dressed, along with Harry in their own warm winter cloths.

Oak didn’t have a chance to protest before she grabbed his car keys and marched outside to the car with a determined air about her.

Delia chuckled, “go get her tiger.”

Oak felt his face flush red, “I told you and that nosey daughter-in-law of mine that its not like that!”

Delia laughed, amused at his bluster. She knew that of course, but it was so fun to see the normally unflappable man turn so many colours.

He stomped out annoyed.

Lily had already strapped Harry into the car seat.

“Do you remember, on Harry’s birthday when you and Delia took us to that field filled with wild flowers? With Moon mountain in the distance and a large river? And you picked me a bouquet of Lilies for Harry to give me?”

“Yes?” Oak asked, wondering what this was all about.

She smiled, “I need you to take me there again.’

“What? Now? But its the middle of winter!”

His protests died though when she turned tearful green eyes on him.

“Please,” she pleaded softly.

Oak swallowed and started the car and began to drive.

It was a long drive and it was spent in relative silence.

When they had parked in the small space at the entrance to the hiking trail that would take them to Wildflower Valley, most of the day had been spent with nothing but questions and growing concern and confusion on part of Oak. During the trip, she would have them stop at the kitschiest diners and eat the most absurd combinations of food.

Finally, after a long full day on the road, the sun was setting when they arrived at the base of the hiking trail.

Oak couldn’t take it any more.

“Lily, I must insist, what is this all about? Why couldn’t this have waited for another day?”

Lily’s breath fogged in the cold air as she paused in unstrapping Harry from the car seat.

“Because their won’t be another time other then now,” she said quietly.

Oak, vastly confused and frustrated by the vague answer, had no choice but to follow when she walked into the dark.

Oak cursed and grabbed the flashlight from the glove compartment and hastily following her.

“Lily, please, tell me what’s this all about?”

Lilly didn’t respond until the trail broke and revealed the vast frozen expanse of Wildflower Valley.

She walked to the edge of the frozen river and looked upwards at the sky still bathed in its cold pale golds drowning under the darkening blue of night.

“Sam, you have been the dearest friend and the closest thing to family I have had this past year, and on this night, its finally time I told you my story.”

She set Harry down, the babe sitting quietly and staring up at his mother silently as she began to unbutton her coat.

“I come from a place that is not on any map you will ever find, a world that you will never know. A place of magic.”

The coat fell, and she began on the sweaters, ignoring Oaks protests.

“I was a strong witch, so sure in my own intelligence, eager to prove myself. I had a friend from childhood who was like me, and we went to school together. But even behind those cozy school walls, no one could completely ignore the stirrings of war.”

The snow beneath her feet began to lighten.

“I was such a little fool. To concerned with standing up against the purebloods, proving myself worthy of that magical place, that when my friend, already teetering on the edge of darkness, said something hurtful to me in a moment of emotion, I rejected him and sent him over that edge and into the arms of a maniac.”

“I eventually fell in love with a man who eventually proved himself worthy of my attention, and we married soon after graduation, and while sad at the loss of my friend, I was still so high and mighty, so eager to live up to the title of greatest witch of my age at school, perfect student, the epitome Light Witch of the era, a shinning example to muggleborns and purebloods alike that the status of one’s parentage didn’t dictate one’s abilities.”

The sweaters joined the coat, and she reached for her waist band.

“Before the end of my first year as an Unspeakable, a researcher much like yourself Sam, except of secrets that are never uttered, the hints of war became reality as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named attacked out in the open.”

“James and I... we were everything that the house of the Brave ascribed us, and we noble Lions followed Albus Dumbledore, leader of the Light in a rebellion against the Dark. Even then, even as we defied the Dark Lord thrice in battle along side our friends Alice and Frank, we were still such fools.”

Lily laughed bitterly.

“Then one day, Alice and I found out that we were both pregnant, and we were so overjoyed! We planned the life of our children, right down to the houses they would be in school when they turned 11. Alice and I shared stories of both battle against the dark lord’s forces, the death eaters, and morning sickness with equal severity.”

Lily chuckled fondly.

“You would have liked Alice, Delia reminds me a lot of her. Then a month before our children were due, Albus went to a pub to interview a woman for a teaching Future Readings. I never put much stock in it, and she was a charlatan if there was ever was one, and a bad one at that. But unfortunately, that night, she gave her one and only real authentic prediction. A prophecy.”

The pants dropped.

“That prophesy predicted that one of two potential children would have the power to destroy the dark lord. And my first friend, the friend that in my rejection for one childish folly and sent him to the opposite side of the war, overheard part of the prophesy and took it to the dark lord gladly.”

“That prophesy sent James and me into hiding under the protection of magic that was tied to a friend of my husband. A friend who betrayed us. On Halloween, the dark lord came for us, and my husband, my James, was killed so that we could escape.”

“I ran. From both him and the leader of the Light. I saw what awaited my son. Death or a tool in a war that he had never chose. A plaything of fate. I ran and hid in dark places and that naive little girl I had been died in the unforgiving waste of the Blight. I did what I had to do to protect us, and devised a way, a last-ditch attempt to save my baby. I used an insane man’s blue prints to build a door way into a place between dimensions.”

Lily flung out her hands, and for once, Oak didn’t fuss this time, eyes transfixed on Lily’s body in a sort of dawning horror along with awe, which was etched in pulsing white rainbows emitting from the marks carved into her flesh, growing in intensity.

“Lily...” he breathed, “What...?”

“The Lord of that place gave me a deal, and I took it for the chance to give my son a new world.”

Oak shook his head, trying to deny what he was seeing what he was hearing.

“Mama!” Harry called up to his mother, little face a pout of concern, “Mama? Sad?”

Lily bent down and stroked her son’s soft cheek, “yes honey, mama is sad.”

Harry popped his thumb in his mouth, “Why?”

“Because Mama has to go away.”

Lily ruffled Harry’s hair as she picked up her son.

“Look Harry, do you remember the stories I used to tell you in the dark place? The pretty pictures filled with flowers and sunlight. Do you remember honey?”

Harry nodded.

“And Sam brought us to that place, this place, filled with flowers and sunshine?”

Harry cocked his head but nodded again.

“One day love, you will forget that dark place and those stories, and only know the reality of them. And that’s a good thing.”

Harry could sense that his mama was sad, and the tree man was upset. Harry worriedly wondered how he could make his mama and tree man happy. Did his mama want flowers?

He looked around at the cold white stuff. Maybe if he had flowers to give his mama she wouldn’t be upset.

Harry struggled to be let down, and his mother did so. He toddled briefly, then sat in the snow and frowned down at the white stuff. He didn’t want white stuff. He wanted flowers for mama and tree man.

He smacked the ground, and from the tiny hand print he left behind, there was no longer snow, but a hand print of green. The patch grew and grew, expanding outwards until the entire valley was suddenly bare of snow. The frozen ground warmed, and from the damp soil flowers of every color burst forward in an explosion of color.

Oak fell backwards onto his rump in shock and Lily stared around her, a tremulous smile on her face as she picked her son back up, “oh Harry!” she chided gently, “you have such a flare for the dramatic.”

“Mama happy?” Harry asked attentively.

“Yes luv, they are very pretty.”

Lily walked over to Oak, crouching down and meant the man’s eyes, the glow from her scars was almost overwhelming by this point, and it was hard making out details of her body.

“Sam, I haven’t got much time, left...I need you to make me a promise. The most important promise you can give to another person, the last promise you will ever need to keep to me. Harry, my son, he’s special Sam,” she smiled gesturing around them at the field of impossibility growing around them, “Harry...he must be protected, he cannot know of the place we came from, for I fear he might be driven to find his way back. If he does, it will end him utterly. You must also not tell anyone about what he can do. I have seen that there is power in this world, but Harry is different from them, and I fear how this world’s powerful will use him should they find out.” 

Lily helped Oak to his feet and gently pressed her son into Oak’s arms, standing back.

“Lily, what’s happening?” Oak whispered.

“The price Sam. I had to pay a price to be in this haven. One year to find someone who would shelter and love my son, but when that time was up, I had to pay up. And because of you, I was able to achieve my goal.”

“What? but...”

Lily smiled, “Take care of him Sam.” she blew him a kiss and closed her eyes.

Then Lily exploded.

Oak dove to the ground just in time, covering the baby with his body as light spilled over them.

When Oak opened his eyes, the air rained with rainbow petals, and he sat on a green carpet of headless plants, alone but for a wailing baby in his arms.

Ooo   ooo  ooo

Oak spent the long drive back processing what he had been told, what he had just seen...What Lily had asked of him. The overwhelming grief and helpless anger that she had not told him or anyone, the fear of what this could all mean.

Oak returned by sunrise of the next morning, finding Delia asleep on the couch, Ash lying in Harry’s playpen next to her.

Oak didn’t wake her, not yet.

The researcher went to his lab, his ultimate bastion of logic where he unraveled the mysteries of Pokémon, one after another.

This time though, he knew that what he faced was not so simple.

He had heard legends of course, from distant regions, stories of other places not of this world. Places that legendary Pokémon were rumored to traverse. Stories of people disappearing never to be seen again or those few that did reappear, driven mad by what they had seen.

His fingers rested on the computer keys as he stared blankly at the dark screen.

He had just come face to face with something truly amazing, legends etched into the flesh of his house keeper, under his nose for a whole year. A woman who had given such a weirdly specific time stamp on her contract of employment. Who had known from day one of their meeting that she was only going to live for only a year.

A legend that had made him soup in thanks for letting her stay, a legend that would glare daggers at him every time he inched towards the ramen, a legend that pinned thieves to walls, who dragged Oak to bed over a shoulder and forced him in to super markets. Who chatted with Delia and baby sat his grandson and...

Oak’s eyes blurred as he began to cry.

A legend that was his friend, a friend that had just died right before his eyes after she asked him to protect and care for her son, who was now officially an orphan, and something beyond normal children.

“What am I going to do?” he said rather helplessly, and closed his eyes, staring down at the sleeping toddler still clutched to his chest, and closed his eyes in despair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was only ever meant to be a shorty, and it in fact the first fic outside of a one or two shot that I have ever actually finished, lol. More could have been done with her time in the Pokemon world but I am satisfied that I have done enough to orient Lily and in turn Harry, into the make-up of the following fic which will focus on Harry's life in the world of Pokemon.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Lyrics from "Ordinary Day" by Vanessa Carlton.  
> 2\. Cut and paste of the Prophecy from the HP books.


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